Grammar is a guide, not a legal rule set. It is helpful for guiding your decisions, but you should trust your gut more than you should trust grammar rules.
All over the internet, you can find forums where people complain about how incorrect certain common phases are.
For example:
“Well is an adverb and good is an adjective. When a person says, “sounds good”, he means “it appears to be good”. “I’m doing good” is a very informal (and incorrect) way of saying, “I’m doing well”. Expressions like these are common in the spoken language but certainly should be avoided in more formal settings.”
“In general, well is an adverb and good is an adjective and many (if not a majority of) AE speakers misuse the two. “I slept well.” is correct but everyone says “I slept good.””
The common formula is “This is a _____, which means that it is wrong in this case that a lot of people use it in.”
The grammar police forget that the labels verb, adverb, adjective, etc. are descriptive of the way words are used. They are a second layer that helps explain the first, not the rules that created language.
Simply because some word has been labeled as an adverb by formal grammar does not mean that you are wrong to use it. It is only wrong to use any word if it will not correctly communicate what you are trying to communicate.
If you are in a rural US community, saying “It works good.” is the correct way to communicate that the thing you are referencing is functioning properly.
If you are in Oxford, saying “It works good.” will likely get you some strange looks and unfavorable judgments. If you don’t want that to get in the way of your message, it would be better to speak in the “grammatically correct” way.
It is good to reference grammar rules if you are unsure of the way something you are writing looks or sounds, but you should never let formal grammar get in the way of the best way to communicate what you want to communicate.
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